Thursday, August 30, 2007

Harvest time.

This past week we have been so busy processing corn and tomatoes. The corn we got in a friend's patch. The tomatoes we got at the Farmer's Market.

Here are Hannah and Ainsley helping get the cherry tomatoes ready for drying. We dehydrated the cherry tomatoes and romas and made sauce out of the sandwich tomatoes. The girls eat the dehydrated tomato "chips" like candy.

The corn was destined for the freezer. We shucked it, blanched it, cut it off the cob and froze it in bags.

This is Hannah at the corn patch. She had to take her pony just in case there was free time for practicing barrel racing.

The girls helped me out as much as they were able, each in their own way.

Hannah shucked the corn.

Ainsley handled the taste testing and played peek-a-boo with the kitten on the steps.

Halfway through, Hannah took a break to enjoy the raw corn.

A common garden snake found its way into one of the boxes. Since this is organic corn, the snake ate what earwigs he could find. Hannah enjoyed playing with him and watching how his body moved. She'd never noticed the fork in a snake's tongue before. When she put him under the bush, the cats watched her and quickly caught him and brought him out to play with and eat.

One of the perks of living on the farm is that nothing goes to waste. If the animals don't eat it, the compost pile gets it. The corn scraps were devoured by all the animals on our farm except for the dogs - surprisingly, even the cats liked the cobs.

This is my La Mancha milk goat, Popcorn, picking through the husks and bad ears.

This is just a random picture from that afternoon of my border collie herding the kitten.